Student-to-teacher ratio in the Czech Republic is double that of other EU nations

The number of Czech students per teacher in the classroom is well above the EU average

Katrina Modrá

Written by Katrina Modrá Published on 17.09.2019 07:00:15 (updated on 17.09.2019) Reading time: 1 minute

Czech teachers are overloaded compared to their colleagues in other European countries, according to newly released statistics by the Pedagogical Chamber.

The data shows that while the number of students in the Czech Republic is growing, the number of teachers is not — and the high number of children in the classroom is leading to widespread burnout among Czech educators.

Compared to the EU average of 13 children per teacher, in the Czech Republic in 2018 one teacher was in charge of close to 20 children. The average teacher in Austria has ten pupils in the classroom, 11 in Poland, 12 in Germany and 15 in Slovakia. Luxembourg had the lowest pupil-teacher-ratio in Europe at 8.

In extraordinary cases primary school classes in the Czech Republic are seeing up to 34 pupils per teacher. The chamber says that in order to achieve the EU average it would be necessary to employee more teachers.

The Ministry of Education, however, says that the comparison between countries is inadequate due to the fact that every nation has a vastly differing education system.

The most crowded classrooms can be found in Prague which has an average of 22 pupils her teacher; the best pupil-to-teacher ratio in the Czech Republic can be found in the Zlín region.

According to the Czech Statistical Office the number of primary school students is up 15 percent more than a decade ago.

The news isn’t all negative: in an analysis of PISA data which shows the relationship between pupil’s scores in literacy and science and the average cost of education per pupil, the performance of Czech pupils was better than the cost of their education compared to OECD countries.

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